In this critical review essay, we examine Rüdiger Safranski’s “philosophical biography” approach to interpreting Nietzsche. We analyze Safranski’s various attempts tobring the biographical facts of Nietzsche’s life to bear on the philosophical narration in order to shed light on the development of Nietzsche’s philosophical thinking. We argue that there are a number of limitations to Safranski’s “philosophical biography” approach to reading Nietzsche, such as Safranski’s tendency to focus almost exclusively on the earlier stages in the development of Nietzsche’s philosophical thinking. However, we also try to show that the one redeeming virtue of Safranski’s book is that it focuses on the intriguing, but often overlooked, concept of “self-configuration” or “selffashioning” (Selbstgestaltung), and it treats this concept as a unifying thread that runs throughout the maze of Nietzsche’s various multifarious writings. We argue, in conclusion, that Safranski successfully connects Nietzsche’s “highly personal philosophy” to the multifaceted “maneuvers of self-configuration” and to the overall Nietzschean project of “fashioning one’s own identity” in an otherwise meaningless world.

Among contemporary authors whose philosophical and social thought can be regarded as universalistic, Karol Wojtyła (1920–2005), who became the Pope John Paul II(1978–2005), seems to hold a particular place. An attempt to present the thought of Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II in universalistic categories has been recently made by thePolish philosopher and political scientist Arkadiusz Modrzejewski. The article discusses the advantages and drawbacks of his proposition.

Within the philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner the concept of the boundary plays a prominent role. As a basic idea to understand the existence of livingorganisms the key concept of the boundary allows to conceive the specifics of human extistence in the term of the eccentric positionality as a fundamental constitution ofman. The article tries to reconstruct the genesis and the systematic content of the concept of the boundary and to outline the consequences for Plessner’s social philosophy.